Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [54]
For all his success, Mitscher needed hand-holding. Even his admirers conceded that “He wasn’t real bright,” and he proved surprisingly reluctant to try new equipment or techniques—an ironic turn for a pioneer naval aviator.
The task force staff worked hard to fill in what the admiral often omitted. Much of the credit went to his chief of staff, Captain Arleigh Burke, an extraordinarily astute “black shoe” surface officer who had made his reputation as a destroyer skipper in 1943. But he won over the sometimes parochial aviators who sported brown shoes as a badge of honor and became known as “Thirty-one Knot Burke” for his press-ahead style of leadership.
Task Force 58 was organized into five task groups, typically each with three Essex class carriers and an Independence class light carrier. Riding those sixteen flattops off Honshu were 1,187 airplanes: 895 Hellcat and Corsair fighters, 201 Avenger torpedo planes, and ninety-one Helldiver dive bombers.
In order to provide more fighters to repel kamikazes, Bennington, Bunker Hill, Essex, and Wasp each received two Marine Corsair squadrons. It was a last-minute decision, and fitting into Navy air groups took some comradely adjustment. As one marine ruefully noted, “We were invited to one of their poker sessions and didn’t even have time to warm up the chairs before we were flat broke!”
Short on instrument flight time and carrier experience (one marine went to war with one shipboard landing in his logbook), the leathernecks nonetheless took the inevitable losses as part of the steep learning curve inherent to tailhook aviation.
The Pacific Fleet’s two oldest carriers—the battle-wise Enterprise and Saratoga—represented a capability unique in all the world’s navies. Led by Rear Admiral Matthew Gardner, they fielded specially trained night-flying air groups. Gardner, previously skipper of the Big E, had the potential of keeping carrier aircraft over Japanese bases around the clock, and he intended to prove it with his ninety-six fighters and thirty-nine bombers.
On February 10, Task Force 58 had departed the fleet anchorage at Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands, nearly 550 miles southwest of Saipan. With an immense lagoon covering 200 square miles, it was a natural base, fully developed after U.S. forces landed in September 1944. Ulithi lay 1,700 miles south of Honshu, putting naval airpower within range of Tokyo itself.
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Most carriers provided a supportive environment for their air groups. One of the best examples was contained in the end-of-cruise report from the commander of Air Group Six aboard Captain Robert F. Hickey’s Hancock. “During the period 9 March 1945 to date, while Air Group Six was aboard . . . it is the opinion of the squadron commanders and the air group commander that nowhere could one find a closer feeling than existed between the ship’s officers and enlisted men and the air group. The air group felt that the Hancock was their ship just like in peace time days.”
That report was submitted by Commander Henry L. Miller, who had taught the Doolittle Raiders everything they needed to know about carrier takeoffs in 1942.
Some others were not as supportive, and the new Shangri-La, under Captain James D. Barner, was certainly among the worst. Recalled one veteran, “The relationship between the ship and the air group was not a good one. It may have been one of the worst in the Pacific.” The feud began during the ship’s shakedown cruise when the executive officer was outraged to discover liquor aboard. He confiscated all the bootleg booze, declaring that anyone who wished could reclaim it—and stand court-martial. Thereupon the devil’s brew was taken